Shine Anyway - 90 × 90 × 2 cm / 35.4 × 35.4 × 0.8 in
When did you last let yourself be bright without first checking whether it was appropriate?
I painted this work in a lifted mood and let that mood stay on the canvas. My subject is presence, and here presence is not quiet. It is a few hot pink roses opening on a low branch, simply because that is what they are doing now.
Dark branches reach in from the corners of a pale, misty green. The centre stays almost empty, and through that air a few petals drift: pink, lime, butter yellow, a deep indigo. On the lower branches the roses sit thick and sculptural, lifted from the surface by the palette knife. Everything around them remains soft, and that softness is what lets them glow.
The canvas is a heavy cotton with a faintly velvet surface. When the spray paint settles on it, the edges blur like breath on a window. When I first unrolled it, I wanted to wrap myself in it.
I work without preparatory sketches, responding to what is already happening on the surface. While the roses were forming, I wanted to place them on every branch. I held back, and that restraint is part of the painting.
A flower does not ask whether it is too much. It opens fully, and then it is gone. Perhaps this painting asks the same of us: to shine while the moment is here.
At 90 × 90 cm it holds a wall on its own: the pale mint-green ground sits easily beside white, sage or warm wood, and the pink roses give the space one clear point of colour.
Medium: Mixed media (acrylic and spray paint) on 100% cotton canvas
Dimensions: 90 × 90 × 2 cm / 35.4 × 35.4 × 0.8 in
Year: 2026
Signed and dated by the artist
Comes with Certificate of Authenticity